The conference formerly known as LinuxWorld Canada

IT 360°

The IT 360° Conference and Expo 2007, May 1-2 in Toronto, Canada, was smaller than normal, which wasn’t necessarily a bad thing.

If you are going to be naked, as a company, you better be buff,” said Keynote speaker Don Tapscott, Chief Executive of New Paradigm and author of Wikinomics: Harnessing the Power of Mass Collaboration. Tapscott addressed a standing-room only crowd on the first day of the conference, and although what he said probably wasn’t new to this audience, Tapscott did put a fresh spin on the idea of mass collaboration. IBM, Red Hat, Novell, and Sun were noticabely absent this year, but other exhibitors such as Symantec, O’Reilly, EmperorLinux, and Linux Professional Institute took advantage of the elbow room and steady stream of attendees. Even though the 2007 conference had fewer booths, visitors to the Linux Magazine booth said that this year it was easier to see all the vendors and find out more about the products and services. There also wasn’t much of a wait to check email in the Koolu-sponsored email garden. Jon “maddog” Hall, “CTO and ambassador to the world for Koolu,” stayed busy spreading the word of low-cost, low-power computing.